


the tinnitus of silence

by besselfcn



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Car Talk with Jack Morrison, M/M, Past Suicide Attempt, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 21:50:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18819706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: “When?” is the next question Gabriel asks, even though it shouldn’t be, but of all of the questions there are that’s the one that burns hottest on his tongue:what did I miss?





	the tinnitus of silence

**Author's Note:**

> Think of this as a spiritual successor to [white noise](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14427615).

They are on their way home from Jesse’s place with two casserole dishes of leftovers stashed in the trunk of the car and the windows rolled down to catch the last warmth of summer nights before it turns to autumn chill when Jack leans his head back in his seat and says, “I tried to kill myself, once.”

Gabriel’s body reacts from the outside in: fingers go numb, then heart stutters, then his stomach twists over, squeezes his lungs until he says, eloquently, “What?”

Jack chews his thumbnail. It’s a disgusting habit. He’s supposed to stop that. “Mmm,” he says. “I didn’t think I ever told you. So I’m telling you.”

The car’s going sixty miles an hour. Gabriel’s steering it on muscle memory alone.

“You--” Gabriel starts. “What did--.” No. “ _What_?”

Jack laughs, like it isn’t funny at all. “It didn’t work,” he says. Has the audacity to grin, at least with his mouth.

“When?” is the next question Gabriel asks, even though it shouldn’t be, but of all of the questions there are that’s the one that burns hottest on his tongue: _what did I miss?_

“Um,” Jack says. He rolls his shoulders. He’s deflecting. Gabriel can’t breathe. “Summer of ‘64. ‘65, maybe. Before things got…”

Gabriel can _hear_ his teeth grinding against each other in the back of his jaw. Before Venice, he thinks. Before Null Sector. Before Gerard, before Ana, before everything--and still--

“Where the hell was I, then?” Gabriel rasps, and he’s not sure who he’s asking.

Jack answers, anyway. “Rome,” he says, short. Knowing. “You were going to be away another three weeks. Ana was gathering intel in Shanghai. I didn’t want--you know. ”

And, _oh_ , Jack’s always been so _fucking_ selfless, hasn’t he? Giving away pieces of himself bit by bit to one cause after another until nothing was left. Overwatch. The UN. Gabriel. _God_ , the things he’d given to Gabriel. Went into retirement as a fucking vigilante.

Planned his own suicide around his friends’ out-of-office schedules.

“Did you write my eulogy for me, too?” Gabriel asks. “Leave out a playlist for the funeral?”

“C’mon,” Jack sighs. And then, “They’d have had one of my speechwriters hand you a eulogy, anyway.”

Gabriel wants to close his eyes against the blindingly clear mental image of it; a templated song of Jack’s greatest praises, and him just the mouthpiece for it as they lowered Jack into the ground, and they _did_ , but he wasn’t there, and neither was Jack, but this would’ve been. They would’ve been. Jack wanted it to be.

Gabriel’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. He--he wants--

“I swallowed a bottle of pills,” Jack says, and Gabriel pulls over to the side of the road.

The car rolls to a stop in the shoulder; the sun’s gone now, just the streetlamps, and he turns the hazards on and leans back in the seat and he looks at Jack and he wants, desperately, to understand.

“I figured,” Jack says, clears his throat, tries again. “I figured anything too messy I’d just heal from before I could do any real damage. But the meds the Program gave us, they were made for _us_. Seemed like if anything could overwhelm the system it was those.” He shrugs. “And I chased it with half a bottle of whiskey, just to make sure.”

“ _Jesus_ , Jack.”

“Woke up in the morning without so much as a hangover. Made it to my 9 o’clock meeting.”

“ _Jesus, Jack_.”

The only sound for a while is the engine idling. The _whirr-whirr-whirr_ seeping into the night.

“We should go home,” Jack says, eventually.

“Why now?” Gabriel says. “Twenty years, why now?”

There he goes again, the chewing habit.

“At Jesse’s party, you said you’d been to Kosovo before,” Jack says. “And I thought, I don’t remember that. And I realized it was probably, you know. Reaper.”

Gabriel breathes in, and out, and in again, just to remind himself he can.

“I hated it,” Jack whispers. “Not that you went. Just that I didn’t know. That there’s things I don’t know. And I just. I didn’t want there to be things you don’t know about me.”

Gabriel looks at him, then. The parallel gouges that run across his face. The wrinkles worn into the corners of his eyes. The hundred tiny scrapes across his knuckles from a fistfight Gabriel never saw.

“I know,” Jack says, without Gabriel having to tell him. “I know. But still.”

 _Whirr-whirr-whirr_.

Gabriel nods. He pulls the car back onto the road.

They go home.

**Author's Note:**

> I hadn't published anything in a while so I just wanted to put out something quickly, like a messy sketch that got the concepts across. Thank u for your time, find me on twitter @besselfcn.


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